Help... Mussid hlth.     7/2/12
I recently bought a green Lobophyllia off the internet and when i received it almost all of the water had leaked out of the bag.
<Happens; not generally resultant in death>
There was still a small amount in there but only a portion of the coral was submersed. I did all the proper acclimating for at least a hour and placed it at the bottom of my tank in the sand.
<... better on rock>
Its been about six days an it still hasn't opened up,
<... needs strong lighting, moderate water movement; and a dearth of allelopathogenic neighbors/tankmates>
what i mean by open is it hasn't puffed up the spikes are still showing, and my water parameters are normal.
<... what?>
The parameters read ,calcium 430, magnesium 1450 and alkalinity 8.3 I could really use some help, thanks.
<... Read here: http://www.wetwebmedia.com/MussidDisF4.htm
and the linked files above. Bob Fenner> 

Acan Coral Budding behavior   3/17/12
Hello All, I have searched your site and others like it and have been unable to find an answer to my question.?
<Have you?>
 I recently acquired a Acan frag from my LFS, when introduced to my tank it looked great.?
<Did it or not?>
My water Param.s are nitrates 0, nitrites 0, phoshates;.2, ammonia 0, calcium 500,
<Too high, and this and all other photosynthates need measurable NO3 and HPO4...>
 temp 80, ph 8.1, Alk 13. It is a 29 gal tank with 25 lbs live rock and Caribbean live sand.?
<What's w/ the ???>
 I do 20% water changes weekly.? I had a hair algae outbreak a while back and my Acan closed up, I got everything taken care of, reduced feedings and lowered photoperiod as well as scrubbed the LR in a old tank water bath.?
Did a 50% water change and all has been great since then.? My Acan, Bubble,
<Likely the allelopathogenic winner here... the Acanthastrea losing>
 Sun corals are loving it as well as my polyps and mushrooms.?
<These too>
 When the Acan reopened there were two new heads on it, needless to say I was overjoyed.?
<Mmm, I wouldn't be... too likely "stress-related"...>
Now, its partially closed and I am very nervous again.? Is it closing up a part of its budding process or is this just a coincidence?? Any help you can give will be appreciated, your website is very informative.?Thank you for all you do.
<... See/read on WWM re the above issues... soluble nutrients, Cnidarian allelopathy. Short/est answer; If I had another established system, I'd be moving this Mussid. Bob Fenner>

Blastomussa Coral/Health 11/13/06 WWM Crew, <Hello Chris> I would like to report that I often search your site, and can point to it as the main reason I got serious about my salt water hobby and treating my tank inhabitants with respect (I even try to drop Microcrustaceans back into my tank when they come out with algae or during overflow filter removal!) <Nice.> Now I go to my LFS armed with a book or two in an effort to understand what I'm buying and what its needs will be.  I have never, in about 15 years of keeping fish, had so much success and it's been very rewarding.  I've had a very stable system with respect to my chemistry, fish, and corals. <Good to hear.> Since I've been reading your site, I've slowly gotten into keeping some basic corals, have added a DSB refugium, and track all my test kit readings, additions, etc. in a little spreadsheet to trend my tank chemistry. <Ah, excellent.> Anyway, thanks again and on to my question: I have a 65 gallon display tank.  In this tank, I have a little fragment colony of Blastomussa merleti (5 little tubes with green polyps.  I have it toward the bottom of my tank, (4x96W orbit PC for lighting). <At least you have the easier of the two Blastos to keep, the other being the wellsi.  They do well under PC lighting and like a medium water flow along with an occasional feeding of a plankton type coral food.  Steady calcium and carbonate levels will also aid in the health of this coral.> I've had this Blastomussa colony for about 6 months, and it has always seemed to do very well.  I've watched the polyps extend further and further out until they touch and look like one colored mat.  In fact two more small polyps had started to bud off the side of the colony. Recently it does not want to come out.  It's not dead, because I can see the retracted polyps, but I can't figure out what's going on.  No major changes, readings have been fairly steady as far as I have measured for the past two months (Nitrate 0ppm, Phosphate 0 ppm, pH 8.2, alkalinity 3.5 mEq/L, salinity 1.024, Calcium 450 ppm (up from about 375 over the last couple months), temp 78 degrees F. <All sounds well here.> There are only two things I can think of: 1) The only thing that is nearby is a large feather duster (one I've had for quite some time, but one that has slowly grown bigger (It's probably 3" in diameter when open).  It's possible some of the "feathers" could touch the Blastomussa, but they've been close to each other (about 4" apart) ever since I got the Blastomussa.  Can Featherdusters attack corals in the same way corals attack each other? <No, the duster is basically a filter feeding worm.> 2)  I flooded my sump when topping it off (I have a nearby fill line, so I left the valve open, got distracted, and overfilled it - absent minded, maybe I should force myself to do it with a transfer container so I am forced to pay attention :-).  Instead of doing anything drastic, I checked the salinity of the system and it had dropped to about 1.022.  I let the system recover via evaporation (just let the sump run high a couple of days) until the salinity was back to my normal level. Nothing in my system seemed to suffer at the time.  But maybe the effect could lag the incident? <Quite possible here, Chris.  Are your PC bulbs aging?  Good idea to replace them yearly to ensure the proper Kelvin temperature is there.> Oh well, that's all I can think of.  It's probably been about 2 weeks that the polyps have been retracted. <You may want to use a good iodine supplement.  You didn't mention frequency of water changes, but generally, a good reef salt will replace the iodine and other needed trace elements that are lost, providing a weekly water changes are done.> Thanks, <You're welcome.  James (Salty Dog)> Chris